Meth A Memoir

by Wayne Huffman

  With few exceptions, the act of cooking meth is not an explosive process. In fact, there are methods of cooking meth that are completely, 100% non-flammable. Of course, you are never told this when the local news reports on the latest meth lab discovered in someone’s garage. Maybe the police don’t actually distinguish the difference when they give the story to the news reporters. But, even if they did, I’m not convinced the newspapers would report it to the people. A meth lab that is non­flammable doesn’t scare people as much, so it’s not as good a story.

  It is true that there are a lot of fires (fires, not explosions) associated with cooking meth. Most of these fires happen due to someone doing something stupid, or simply not knowing what they are doing to begin with. If you don’t know what you are doing, you will end up doing something stupid. A magnificent example of this would be the fire in my kitchen when I was learning to break down my pseudo pills. We all remember that story.

  When there actually is an explosion, and there are some (rarely), it is not the lab, or cook pot, that explodes. Explosions happen because of a lack of ventilation. Just like when I blew the door off of my microwave oven. It didn’t blow up because I was evaporating alcohol; it blew up because the microwave was in an enclosed area that allowed the fumes to build up then explode; could have happened to anyone.

  This kind of thing can, and does, happen in legal work that involves using flammables. For instance, say you are staining a beautiful, antique table in your home workshop or garage. The warning label will quite clearly tell you to use with lots of fresh air but, you decided to keep the windows closed. We don’t want the air stirring up dust. Once the table is all stained, you stand back to admire your work. Hell, why not have a cigarette? BOOOOM!! You just ignited a room full of flammable vapor and blew yourself up. Does this mean furniture refinishing is explosive? No, it means, don’t be stupid, ventilate.

  So, what have we learned today? A) Despite what Captain Hero wants you to believe, dismantling a meth lab isn’t quite as dangerous, or difficult, as reverse engineering a nuclear weapon, and, B) If you suspect your night owl neighbor, with the blacked out windows, is cooking meth, because you smell something strange coming from his house, then chances are pretty good that he is ventilating. That means, he isn’t about to blow up half the block so, with all that in mind, try to calm down.

  Chapter 50

  Although Angelina assured me differently, I was beginning to wonder if Ron was actually going to show up at Scotts, like he said he would. Angelina said, “If he said he will be here then he’ll be here”. Eventually, he did show up. It was about 9 p.m. when he got there with a girl named Rose in tow. Rose was his sister-in-law, and very pregnant at the time, but I found out later, he was doing her.

  I asked Ron what was up with the anhydrous tanks. He said that he had been doing refrigeration work that day at a local bottling company when he noticed them. According to Ron, they were just sitting out in the open waiting to be stolen. And, as luck would have it, he was the man for the job.

  We jumped into Ron’s car, a ‘67 Fairlane, and took a ride over to where the tanks were at. I wanted to grab one of them right then and there but we couldn’t fit the tank into the trunk of his car. We went back to Scotts, collected Angelina and Rose, then we all went back to Angelina’s house. Ron and I had some talking to do.

  I wanted to know why Ron came to me, a relatively new guy around this group of people, about the tanks. There were people he had known a lot longer that he could have dealt with. Why me? It turns out that he thought about Will and Mark first but decided he couldn’t trust either of them enough to deal with them. I reminded Ron that I was a Red P cook, not an anhydrous cook. He asked if I could figure out how to use the gas and I assured him that it wouldn’t be a problem.

  The truth is, I had been around a couple of anhydrous cooks so I knew how to “cold cook”, I just had never done it. I asked Ron, what kind of deal did he have in mind about the tanks? He told me he just wanted me to remember him with a little dope from time to time. Hell that was easy enough to do.

  Since I was in need of a pick-up truck to acquire the tanks, I was going to have to bring in a partner. I called Cyle. Although he didn’t have a truck, he did have an old Jeep Cherokee. I figured that would work just as well. I took Cyle to show him where the tanks were so we could figure out how we wanted to steal the damn things.

  Something irritating about Cyle is that he wants to over complicate things. When I was ready to go get the tanks, he wanted to dress up in camo, face paint and all, then go lay in the weeds and watch the building. Watch it for what?? I waited for Cyle to get off his ass for two days but he kept wanting to stake out the building so, I decided to get someone else to help me. Tweakers are so hard to work with.

  Word was getting out that there were a couple of tanks about to be stolen from somewhere. Will, Mark, and a few other people were asking a lot of questions of a lot of people. Everyone wanted these tanks so I had to hurry. I approached Shawn with the idea of letting him help me but his truck wasn’t in any shape to try to haul that much weight.

  I found myself at Angelina’s house going nuts. I needed a truck and it was killing me that I couldn’t find one. I even tried finding John’s stupid ass but nobody knew where he was hiding. About the time I was considering trying to get the tanks onto the roof of Leanna’s car, Michael, a local junkie, stopped by to give me some great news. He said to me, “Cyle and Queeny are on their way to steal two tanks of anhydrous.” I could have slapped him.

  I was so fucking pissed off. That dirty little bastard was stealing the tanks, my tanks, with someone else. I called Cyle. No answer. I called Queeny. No answer. I was on my way out the door, to go to the bottling company, to keep anyone from touching those tanks when Christy walked in.

  “Call Mark!” I said as soon as I saw her, “Tell him I’ll split one of those tanks with him, if he helps me get them, but we have to get them right now.”

  Christy called him and we set up a place, convenient to both of us, to meet. When we met up, Mark had this pretty little dope whore, Jessie, with him. I was with Christy. We parked Christy’s car and all of us rode in Marks truck to go look at the tanks. He took one look and said, “we need more help.” They were pretty big tanks, weighing in at about 400 pounds each.

  We went to Will’s house then. The girls went inside to wait while we made our plans for getting the tanks. I suggested we just drive up there like we owned the place, jump out, and throw the things into the back of the truck. It wasn’t late so, if anyone saw us, they would most likely assume we were maintenance workers. It was a simple idea and everyone agreed it was what we should do, so, that’s what we did.

  We got to the bottling company and Mark and I jumped out of the truck. As Will turned the truck around, Mark and I worked on getting the chain loose, that kept the bottles from falling over, out of the rack. We got the chain off just as Will pulled alongside us again. Mark and I lifted the tanks into the bed of the truck and we slammed the tailgate closed. Mark grabbed the dealer tag Will used on all of his vehicles off the bumper then we jumped in and hauled ass.

  The whole job took all of 45 seconds, at the most. It was great!! As we rode back to Will’s house, Mark asked if I was positive the tanks had anhydrous ammonia in them and not some other gas. Hell no, I wasn’t sure of anything. It never even crossed my mind that there could possibly be anything else in the tanks. I didn’t actually say this but I thought it and I guess the look on my face told Mark all he needed to know.

  Mark turned around in the seat and squeezed through the sliding window to have a look. Once he read the labels, he got back into his seat and just sat there, staring silently ahead. I sat there looking at him pissed off that we had just done all this for nothing when he started smiling. It was anhydrous!!

  Back at Will’s house, Mark and I loaded the tanks into Marks truck while Will headed inside for a beer. Mark wanted to know how I wanted to pay Will for helping us. I said we would spli
t one of the tanks 3 ways. Mark was cool with it so that’s what would happen.

  We got Jessie and Christy, then left. Mark dropped Christy and me off at Christy’s car and we all agreed to meet up at Marks house within an hour. I had to go to Wal-Mart first to buy a new, empty propane tank, to fill with anhydrous. Just as I was getting into Christy’s car, my cell phone beeped with a text message; “Someone just stole the tanks. Cyle” The dumbass was doing his Rambo bullshit the whole time we were stealing the tanks.

  By the time Christy and I got to Marks house, he had one of the tanks unloaded. He had left the other in the truck, assuming I would want to borrow the truck to take the other tank somewhere for safe keeping. He was right. There was no way in hell I was leaving both tanks at his house, even if it meant I would have to roll the thing down the road to get it somewhere.

  I took off in Marks truck and found a place to bury the tank. Since the tank at Marks house had enough gas in it to last 3 people for quite a while, I wouldn’t need this one right away. Once I had it safely underground, I went back to Marks house. By the time I got back, he still had not gotten my propane tank filled so he gave me a smaller tank he had, that was full, to hold me over.

  Having so much anhydrous at my disposal was only one of the reasons I decided to be a cold cooker. Another reason was, gram for gram, anhydrous cooks produce more finished product from the available pseudo then a Red P cook does. That obviously means more money for me.

  My biggest incentive for switching cooking methods was because of a lack of 7% iodine, which I needed to make my iodine crystals. It wasn’t that it was getting hard to find, the shit just wasn’t being produced anymore. (Damn meth cooks screwed that up too.) Anhydrous labs also use less chemicals, and the cook time is a lot less than that of a Red P lab. Really, for a lot of reasons, I should have switched to anhydrous a long time ago. It was much easier.

  Chapter 51

  About two days after stealing the anhydrous ammonia tanks, I decided to go ahead and try my very first cold cook. Because the strong ammonia smell associated with cold cooking, I needed to be in a fairly secluded area to do the cook. I went to Scott’s house to do it.

  When I got to Scott’s house, there were quite a few people there so I told Scott to get rid of everyone. While he did that, I began unloading all of my new cook supplies from the trunk of Leanna’s Malibu. I had borrowed her car to go do this cook.

  Other than Scott, the only people I allowed to stay at the house while I did the cook was Queeny, another friend of mine, Jeremy, and a dude I didn’t know, Mitch. Yes, this was the same Queeny who was going to steal my tanks but, in his defense, he didn’t know they were mine, so it was all good in the end.

  Mitch was new in the circles I had been hanging around in. He was an old friend of Queeny and John, and that is the only reason anyone even let this dude hang around. He definitely was not trusted, especially by Mark who absolutely refused to sell him anything at all. If Mitch wanted to buy, or even trade pseudo pills to Mark for dope, he had to go through Queeny or John. The only reason I even let him stay while I did the cook was because I didn’t trust him enough to let him leave. Hell, he might have called the cops or some stupid shit like that.

  Knowing that Jeremy had been around several cold cooks before, I asked him to help me out with this cook. He agreed to help me. We set up by the window in the empty bedroom I always liked to cook in when I cooked at this house. One of the best things about cold cooking is that the pills don’t have to be broken down to cook them. All you do with cold cooking is, grind the pills to powder in a coffee bean grinder and cook them like that. It’s a huge time saver.

  We got the pills ground then sprayed them with the ammonia. The odor was horrible and it was all we could do to breathe. Since there was a fan pulling most of the ammonia out the window, we were able to keep working. In case you didn’t know, ammonia vapor is attracted by water. In our case, water meant our eyes and lungs. That means, we were also having a hell of a time seeing, as well as breathing.

  When it was time to add the lithium strips, from the “AA” batteries, I realized I had a new problem... I didn’t know how to strip the battery. I was standing there with the battery in one hand and pliers in the other, looking at them like I was stupid. I guess Jeremy figured out what the problem was pretty quickly because he took everything from me and started stripping the batteries for me. After that, I completed the cook with no further problems.

  I did have a few questions along the way but, even though Jeremy wasn’t actually a cook, he was able to answer most of them. After the cook was finished, and the lab stuff was packed up, I smoked most of the dope I had just made with everyone that was there. I really just wanted to see how well they liked it. Since it was free dope for them, they loved it.

  That’s the thing with meth heads, they are loyal to the cook they are around at the moment. Not all of them but most of them, that’s for certain. Besides the girls, Carson was the worst for being two faced. He would do absolutely anything I asked of him, as long as I let him hang around me. As soon as I took off, and he got around another cook, I was suddenly the worst cook he knew. My dope, he would be quoted as saying, wasn’t worth smoking. Well, fuck him and all those like him.

  During the night, I got to talking to Mitch. He seemed alright, I suppose. He was just really full of shit. A natural born liar. Probably because he was trying so hard to get people to like him. I guess he never thought that people might actually like him if he wasn’t getting caught in lies every five seconds. I know it had a lot to do with why nobody trusted him. You just can’t trust a fake-ass motherfucker like that. That’s all there is to it.

  While we talked, he informed me that he had a lot of connections he could get pills through. He said he would like to start supplying me with pseudo. He also claimed to have over ninety acres of land, a huge horse barn, and a work shop, all perfect for cooking in, if I was interested in working something out. Queeny backed up his claim so I said I would come by one day and check the area out. We exchanged phone numbers and left it at that.

  The next night, I got a ride over to Marks to pick up the propane tank he had filled for me. While I was there, I ran into Billy Jean Ambrose. Billy Jean was kind of new to the meth world but a lot of the people I was doing business with had known Billy Jean for most of their lives. He was trusted.

  Billy Jean was from Erwin, Tennessee and the boy had money. Lots of money. He had only recently been buying large quantities of meth and he was able to work his way in with Mark, Will, and me so he could buy directly from us. He was also trying to push Shawn out of the picture as Marks number one helper. This was beginning to cause a few hard feelings between Mark and Shawn because Shawn began expressing his feelings that something just was not right with Billy Jean working his way in the way he was. Mark just called his suspicions, “jealousy”.

  So, I was talking to Billy Jean and I mentioned that I needed a vehicle. Leanna never had a problem with me borrowing one of her cars but, she was going through a shit load of my dope as payment. Also, every time I was gone for more than an hour, she would be calling me every five minutes wanting to know where I was, what I was doing, shit like that. It was irritating as hell so I wanted to get my own car; less of a headache that way.

  Billy Jean told me he had a really nice Ford Bronco he would be willing to sell me for sixteen hundred dollars. We talked about it and he said he would take six hundred cash and the rest in trade on dope. I told him to bring the Bronco by Angelina’s house the next day and I would check it out. The next day, he showed up with his best friend, Kid. I looked the truck over and it was a real nice ride, especially for an ‘86 model. I bought it and was happy to finally have my own vehicle.

  Angelina and I gave Billy Jean and Kid a ride back to Erwin then, after dropping them off, we went to pick Carson up. I wanted him to pill shop for me so I could do a cook that night. Carson, Angelina, and I spent the day buying all the pseudo we could get our hands on. Once we were fi
nished shopping, we went back to the house to wait for night; my favorite time to cook.

  I called my friend Davy to see what he and Winter were planning on doing later that night. He said, they really didn’t have any plans so, I asked if he cared if I cooked at his barn. Davy was all for it. He knew I would be hooking him up with dope for the use of the barn, like I always did. Angelina, Carson, and I headed out to go to Davy’s house at around 1 am. It had started snowing a few hours earlier and the roads were getting pretty slippery, especially in the mountainous areas like where Davy lived. I was glad I had 4-wheel drive for the trip.

  About halfway to Davy’s house, I hit a fucking deer. The damn thing ran right out in front of me. There was no way for me to avoid hitting it; the road was a solid sheet of ice. Angelina cried like a baby over it and I got my bumper pushed back into the door so that it wouldn’t open. I wished I could have run it over again because of that.

  The cook was perfect that night but, we all about froze out asses off. There’s no heat in the barn. I paid Carson and Angelina with dope, their preferred method of payment, for the pills they bought. Since Christmas was on the way, I gave Davy a pile of dope for letting me use his barn that night. I figured he could sell some of the dope, then use the money to buy Winter a present or something. I also had enough dope left over to pay myself back for the Bronco. See, it turned out to be a good night, despite what the deer did to my truck.

  When Angelina and I got home, the next morning, we had a surprise waiting for us. Jackie was there waiting for us to come home. Jackie being out of jail was the last thing I expected but, there she was. I’m not sure what Jackie thought when she showed up there that morning. That we were still together, I suppose. Well, I had news for her, Angelina and I were together. Not to be outdone, Jackie had news for me... PREGNANT!! Oh shit!